


Halamshiral

by loquaciousquark



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Family, Gen, Pregnancy, Summer Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 02:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loquaciousquark/pseuds/loquaciousquark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arianni, and a series of choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halamshiral

**Author's Note:**

> For the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang. The wonderful piece that inspired this is by [foxghost](http://foxghost.tumblr.com), and I am so glad she gave me the chance to examine such a fascinating, often-overlooked character. I'd also like to thank Jade, as ever, for her betaing services. 
> 
> Enjoy!

 

—

When the moon is high and cold and clear and the scarlet sails of the aravels are made great dark-shadowed wings by night, Arianni dreams.

Oh, she is no mage to walk beyond the Veil with open eyes, but there are other pleasant fantasies even someone as ordinary as she might keep safe inside her heart. At the fires, the hahren sit and speak in their circles, and across the way a child cries out for mamae, and her father speaks softly to her mother. But elsewhere—

Elsewhere, a cook pulls a sizzling pan from the fire and throws handfuls and handfuls of hot, sweet, foreign spices on the meat until the smell of it floats down through the hallways of an enormous stone castle like a bird. Elsewhere, a noblewoman lifts a jeweled brow and a jeweled hand alike, elegant fingers pulling paint down a stark white canvas. Elsewhere, mountains rise, reaching up to scrape the sky with white-capped shoulders, jostling each other until they array themselves in one long line as far as the crow's eye can see.

Elsewhere, there is beauty. Elsewhere, there is something more than this flat plain and the trees and the tiny hills that the aravels sweep around, side to side, like toy boats that dream of the sea.

—

Winter comes and takes her mother, frail woman, and in the early spring her father follows after. Arianni grieves and the clan grieves with her, for theirs were not the only lives lost, but when summer bursts from the bud in green-leafed glory her heart lightens in her chest despite herself, a tree-limb breaking free at last of the stones that pin it to the riverbed. The hunters go out in many small, silent groups; the halla stamp and snort and look to the open plains of the east; Arianni takes her place beside the healer in the sun and weaves and washes her bandages, mixes her tinctures, crushes leaves and berries alike with her stone pestle until the tips of her fingers are stained brown and red and black and the smell of elfroot clouds in her hair.

It is hot, hard work—but oh, oh—summer is when the traders come.

They pass through as they always do when the sun is not so hot, in the early dawn hours or in the dusk of evening. Arianni prefers the latter; then their wagons and their horses are sun-heated and glowing, and if she walks beside them to guide their animals to water she can smell the precious spices they carry, see the bolts and yards of fine linens and silk dyed other than green and forest-brown, gloves made for beauty and not only long life.

It is on one of these days in the late gold hour that the horse she leads shies at a wasp-sting. Arianni is not afraid of horses, but she _is_ unfamiliar with them, and as she tries to catch the bridle on the horse's tossing, nervous head, it swings sideways and throws its weight against her. She staggers back, stunned—but before she can fall warm hands catch her shoulders and brace her on her feet. Others rush to the horse; Arianni looks up.

A human man. Tall—so very tall, and young, and handsome, his long red-brown hair pulled away from his face. "Are you all right?" he asks, and his words are thick and rich with Antivan vowels.

"Yes," she says, or rather thinks she says, but she is not entirely sure it is true, not any longer. "Ma serannas, stranger."

"Stranger!" he says, and laughs, and his laughter is rich, too, and foreign, and strong. "But you Dales have always been misers with your friendships."

"Misers!" Arianni repeats in much the same tone, affronted and amused in the same moment. "Not by choice. We give our friendship freely to those who deserve it."

She turns to face him and he takes one small step closer to her, still smiling, and the sun flashes down his hair and the bridge of his narrow human nose. "Then tell me how I might deserve your friendship, lady."

Foolish little girl, wandering again, lost in her dreams of dangerous, foreign lands. She smiles. "Tell me your name."

"Vincento."

"Arianni."

—

Vincento is smart, and clever, and worldly in a way Arianni has never known among the People. His trading caravan passes through their lands often that summer, and each time he comes he seeks her out to bring her new gifts, foreign gifts, and tales from his travels of such wonders as she can hardly imagine. He brings her a silver torque and tells her of cities with towers so high they block the sun; he brings her pouches of tea-leaves and spice that still smell of the great furrowed farmlands from which they were plucked. He brings her a tiny glass vial of perfume that carries light like a star in its hundred facets, and when he softly tells her that the noblewoman he met in Orlais who wore this scent holds no candle to Arianni's own beauty, she laughs, and blushes, and believes him.

He kisses her in the shadow of his caravan's lead wagon on the longest day of the summer, and the smell of Nevarran spices curls around them both. She returns his kiss when the sun has fallen behind the trees and she has found him at the stream; later, when the hahren gather with the traders for their evening meal he pulls her into the lee side of an aravel and embraces her until she is breathless.

That night, she finds a cloak and takes him into the quiet dark of the wood. He watches her with black, hungry eyes, and she thrills to have this power over him—over _herself_ —and when she unclasps her cloak from her throat the handsome, worldly, clever human finds himself without a word to speak. She wears his silver necklace.

She wears only his silver necklace.

—

Afterwards, they lie on her cloak together and talk. He tells her more tales of Nevarra and Orlais and Rivain that ease but do not sate her starvation for such things; she tries to teach him her language and laughs at the clever, wicked tongue that suddenly moves so clumsily over her words.

"Aneth ara," she repeats, toying with his long, human fingers.

"Aneth ara. Aneth…what is the other one you always say? Andra—Andaran…something. Andaran Antivan, strange humans."

She laughs and he laughs with her, the sound twisting like roots into her chest. "Andaran atish'an?"

"Mm, yes," he murmurs, and his hands twist too, freeing themselves from hers, sliding up her side and down it again with light, feathering touches that make her shiver. "Andaran atish'an."

"This is a place of peace."

"So it is." He kisses her shoulder, her neck. "Andaran atish'an, Arianni. Aneth ara, Arianni."

"Vincento—"

"Hm?"

"Nothing," she says, and kisses his mouth.

He laughs against her lips. "Speak for me again."

"Ma nuvenin," she murmurs, and adds, more quietly, "ma vhenan."

"What does that mean?"

"Another time," she tells him, an answer without an answer, and he does not ask again.

—

The summer begins to wane, and on his company's next pass Vincento invites her to see the city to which they travel. It is called Kirkwall and it is very grand and no more than a day's ride from the Sabrae camp, and there they will visit and trade for a week's time before passing this way again. Her heart leaps when he suggests it, and again when he takes her in his arms afterward, and in the time between that morning and the night that follows it she is resolved to go. But—

"I have nothing to wear," she tells him that night when they are curled around each other in a small tent on the outskirts of the traders' camp. Firelight flickers and plays on the white cloth, throwing odd shadows on his face and hers, turning his expression strange and foreign as he smiles at her.

"For all that your women are strange to me, there are some things that are the same everywhere." He kisses her nose. "I have clothes for you to wear."

"Dresses?"

"And skirts. And boots."

"No boots."

"The streets of Kirkwall are different from the woods, Arianni. Dirty, crowded. You will want boots."

"No boots," she says firmly, and he lets her be.

She tries on the clothing he brings her another morning, carefully, tucked away in a tiny, forgotten berth on an aravel docked and still. Enough light falls through the open window to let her see the delicate gold-threaded embroidery on the hems, at the collar of the neck; enough foreign fabrics have passed through her hands for her to know the silk is fine as anything in Orlais, the color rich and well-dyed and too, too fine for her to touch with her forest-callused fingers. Still, she slips into it with trembling fingers, and pulls her hair free of its high knot, and when she turns the precious mirror-glass purloined from Irletha's pack another woman looks back at her: someone worldly and refined, someone exotic, someone beautiful even through the vallaslin marked down her forehead.

She touches the silver torque at her throat. Oh, yes, she thinks. She will go with Vincento to Kirkwall.

She tells only one person of her plan. Toris agrees to help her evade the hahren on the day that Vincento's caravan is to leave, one cousin's promise to another. But on the morning she is to meet Vincento at the edge of the camp an elder stops her, her precious bundle of clothing and jewelry held in the elder's hands, and Arianni has no choice but to follow her to the Keeper. There Toris stands—Toris, traitor! and with the shame of a traitor in his eyes—but it is the Keeper's eyes which are worse, heavy and stern and unsmiling as they look on her.

"Keeper," says Arianni, and lifts her chin.

"Da'len," she says, her voice as old and thin as leaves at the end of autumn, her face as lined as an old oak. "I am told you plan to leave us."

"Only for a time, Keeper. I wished—I wished to see the city."

"To see a human's city in the company of humans is no safe thing, da'len. Your parents would not have wished this."

"My parents—" she starts, blinking back unexpected tears of fury and grief, "my parents would have understood my wish to see more of the world than the aravels can reach."

"To see what of that world?" she asks, bending her already-curved shoulders towards her. "The quick, meaningless shouts of a quickened people? Streets and tenements stacked so closely together that nothing green may grow, that no sunlight may penetrate to the roots? There is only death there for the Elvhen."

"I don't believe that, Keeper. I've spoken with—some of the traders. There are good things to see amongst humans too."

The Keeper closes her eyes, paper-frail lids as wrinkled and delicate as the silk in her pack. "Summer's love is fleeting, child, especially with shemlen. With winter comes only chills."

Stung, she says too sharply, "He isn't like that."

Those eyes open again, pale and terrible, and Arianni flinches. But the Keeper does not raise her voice in anger or in condemnation; instead, she only sighs. "You will not be dissuaded."

"No, Keeper."

"Then go," she says, and sighs again, and though Toris makes a quick movement at his side she does not look away from her. "Creators keep your steps from the eyes of the Wolf."

"And yours," Arianni tells her, and takes her pack from the hahren.

Then she runs.

—

Kirkwall is— _alive_. It is everything she has ever dreamed and more, white stone towers and broad man-made streets, people packed elbow to elbow in the great square laid before the Chantry. That is another thing that amazes her, when Vincento takes her to a service one day—never has she seen such magnificent gold and brass gleaming in the light of a thousand candles, the voices of the women who sing the verses twining beautifully with the thin lifting trails of smoke as they praise their god.

"Lovely," she tells Vincento later, humming a snatch of the Chant; "lovely," she tells him when he brings her a fine green scarf from their trading; "lovely," he whispers to her in the dark of night when his fingers trace her vallaslin and her eyes and her lips.

A week becomes two. She gets lost, once, and finds herself suddenly in the wrong part of town, a foul-smelling odor belching forth from a burning place in the nearby sky. The walls are frightening here, tall and lined with dangerous spikes and the streets are not clean, and too many of the faces around her are hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed, outstretched hands reaching to touch her fine silk dress.

A dwarf gives her directions, and when Arianni finally stumbles into a street she knows among the fine buildings she recognizes, she begins to cry. Her hands shake all the way to the rented room she shares with Vincento, tremble when she locks the door behind her, grow cold as she pulls from her pack a tiny carved image of Mythal. She presses the icon to her lips, closing her eyes, and does not move again until Vincento returns that evening.

—

Vincento tells her that he must go to a small city on Ferelden's northern coast unexpectedly. It is only for a few days and then he will return; he asks her to consider waiting for him here, in Kirkwall, rather than going back to the clan. This makes sense, she decides. It is only for a few days. There are shops in the colorful market she wishes to visit; Vincento has left her more than enough coin for that. A few days will be enough.

"Yes," she says, and kisses him, and when he laughs and tumbles her back to the bed she smiles.

His first letter comes the day after his ship docks in Highever. Three days must be a week, he tells her, due to their trading partner's weather delay. Arianni laughs when she reads it, fingering the torque at her throat; Vincento will never be able to judge time. She writes back, tells him not to worry. There will be time later; there will be reunions later. She buys a gold bracelet at the market and wears it all day. Once she dreamed of this—here, it is no dream.

After two weeks, the trading partner arrives. By now Arianni is lonely despite her best efforts, missing Vincento and missing her people more than she thought she might; the few trees in the Chantry square have begun to yellow and redden and brown at the edges, and each night the sun's last hour falls earlier than the last. The pouch of money Vincento left her has begun to grow small, and this more than anything worries Arianni—she has no coin and no skills and no trade, and unless Vincento returns soon she will have no rent either.

She writes him this. He tells her a month, and sends enough coin for rent for two. This helps some. Not enough.

She is so lonely.

—

Winter comes early in Ferelden, and when Arianni hears that an early ice storm has closed the ports from Denerim to Jader she goes back to her room and tears Vincento's last letter to shreds. Savage, fury-hot tears cloud the fluttering remains; she screams into her wrist to muffle the sound and slams her closed fist on the writing desk. Again, and a third time—

Then she seats herself at the desk and weeps.

He has been gone three months. Now he will be gone another four.

She still has not told him she is with child.

—

Vincento's letters come fewer and farther between and with less and less coin each time, and after at last Arianni writes and tells him of the babe they do not come at all. She gives notice to the landlord and takes a small one-room place in Lowtown. She has precious little money left but she is careful with it, so careful, and even though the other tenants call her knife-ear and whore and laugh at her vallaslin, she sets her chin and lifts her head and goes looking for work. She will not run back to her clan; she will not _beg._

She finds an apothecary in a little alley in need of more hands. She cannot brew Elegant's strange, strong potions, but she can make bandages and set broken bones and measure out herbs, and if now and then a glint of golden light on a cut-facet vial reminds her of her little bottle of scent she does not let it shake her heart. Elegant lets her use the brew-pots, too, when they are not needed, and from her tiny, careful hoard of coins Arianni purchases real Dalish packets of tea and other herbs, for her and for her child, to make them strong.

Elegant corners her one evening unexpectedly, late, when the moon is hidden behind thick winter clouds and Arianni has tucked herself as close as she dares to the ember-laid hearth. She looks up at her employer, ashamed, unable to admit that even the inn's cheapest rent came too high.

Elegant, who is one year older than Arianni's nineteen, kneels at her feet. "Where's the child's father?"

"Ferelden," Arianni says, pulling her blanket more closely around her shoulders, around the swelling child below her breasts. "Trapped by the winter." Trapped by more than that.

"He sends you no money?"

"It's gone."

Elegant frowns, glances at the windows that rattle with the biting winter wind. "Sleep here tonight," she says at last. "I'll talk to a friend tomorrow."

"Thank you," Arianni whispers, curling her toes beneath the blanket, and when Elegant locks the door behind her for the evening Arianni lets her head fall back against the wall, closing her eyes against the high still starlight that falls over her, a cool glow that brings illumination but no warmth. She does not dream of her clan beneath these same stars, huddled in the aravels together, warm and laughing and eating well; she does not think of the wild fierce silence of the wood when even she who is no hunter steps into a white snow-muted world.

Instead she curls forward over herself, and over her child, and whispers, "Sleep, da'vhenan," and though her voice is weak and unpracticed, she begins, softly, to sing.

—

Elegant finds a friend of a friend of a friend, and in a matter of hours Arianni gains possession of a tiny home in Kirkwall's alienage. It is the first time she has seen the alienage with her own eyes, and as she steps under the shade of the wilting husk of a vhenadahl, she finds herself wanting to do nothing more than _weep_.

These are not elves of the People. Oh, she recognizes their features, and sees in their shape her own shape, but there is no vallaslin here, no memories to Keep, no knowledge of the old ways save what she herself brings to them. There is no high glory in this tree that they claim to revere; as she passes she notices names carved into its venerable trunk, sweethearts marking this part or the other as their own, precious white-wood scarred and broken for a moment's fleeting passion.

A long line of shadow crosses her path halfway across the courtyard. Arianni looks up as it falls over her, catching only the last glimpsing edge of the day's dying sunlight as it falls behind the tenements stacked high and higher, elves of every age and appearance she can imagine calling out to each other with slang she does not know, words that sound like her words and yet so different that she cannot quite catch their meaning.

No trees here, or not living ones, and no sun, and no sky—and now even her language is denied her.

She does weep, later, once she has thanked her guide and met the hahren and unpacked her small valise to her satisfaction. Her dress from Vincento she keeps in its wrapping with the silver necklace; that part of her life, she thinks, is ending, but a girl's young hopeful dreams are caught in the thread of the gold embroidery and in the shining of the silver torque, and for the sake of those dreams she will not sell these yet. Instead she places them under her thin mattress and looks instead to her little carving of Mythal, features worn thin from rubbing and worrying and too many prayers too quickly. "Protect me," she whispers, and sits slowly on the mattress, and touches her fingertips to the place where her child grows. "Protect us."

—

She lives. Her child lives, and grows, and Elegant begins to teach her the making of the potions and poultices that she had not known before. In return Arianni teaches Elegant the People's ways, and shows her the strength of ironbark in crafting small, pretty things, and when the trinkets she makes begin to sell and the poultices she makes begin to heal worse wounds more quickly, Elegant shares the coin she earns without price and without grudge.

A letter from Vincento comes near the end of winter, short and without endearments, telling her that the ice has begun to thaw and he will be returning soon to Kirkwall. It says, too, that he wants nothing to do with the child and nothing to do with her, and, save the return of his few belongings she has not sold, he has no wish to see her again.

It stings less than she expects, this loss. But somehow she has known it, had realized from the first glance of summer light down his red-brown hair that this human man would ruin her. She puts a hand to her stomach, feels the press of a small heel in response. Then she straightens and packs up Vincento's things, and out of the small bonus from her last batch of healing poultices she pays a courier to deliver the package to its owner. She adds a letter too, as calm as she can make it, thanking him for the coin that let her live in the first cold days of winter and the warmer memories that even now she cherishes, and sends it with the courier as well.

She does not mention the child. That gift Vincento has severed all claims to; that treasure she will keep to herself, precious, guarded from all harm until she can teach the cost of a fleeting summer's love, until she can tell the way the Dread Wolf walks and know her child will be safe.

One day, when the sun is high enough overhead that a few sparse shafts of gold-light trickle down through the leaves of the vhenadahl, Arianni lifts her face into a sudden breeze. She closes her eyes and breathes in—and there is spring in this wind, warm and promising, and she knows in her heart of hearts that the aravels will soon pass through, scarlet wings aloft in the skies that carry her people home. It is only a short walk to the eastern gate, and a shorter walk beyond that to the sudden flush of plains-grass that spreads out before her, and in the way that dreamers know their home in dreams Arianni knows the path for her feet.

The path is long, here, and she is very close to birth, and her ankles are sore long before she sees the spread of red sails against the sky, but Arianni does not stop and does not falter, one foot falling after the other into the springy greening grass. A child sees her first, one lone elf-girl out beyond the edges of the camp; she calls back to her friend, a boy Arianni recognizes only by his bright shock of red hair. Only a year has passed—not even that. Some things changed too quickly.

And some do not, she thinks, as the Keeper emerges from the aravel to greet her, her arms open, her wrinkled face split into a warm, welcoming smile. "Da'len," she says, and when she embraces her Arianni allows herself to be held, because some things are too precious to be ruined by grudges, because some hurts can be healed by no poultice.

"Aneth ara, Arianni," she murmurs into her ear, and if she feels her tears she does not speak of them.

—

On the first day of spring, when the trees on the edge of the wood send forth their first uncertain white blossoms, Arianni gives birth to a child. He is young and healthy and _loud_ , and when the midwife gives him into her arms she cannot help but laugh, because here are her own eyes turned back on her in angry petulance; here are her own ears, blunted but whole; here are her own ten fingers and ten toes, sound and well-formed and without flaws. He has his father's nose; she tweaks it gently, laughing when he frowns, and Toris smoothes back her hair from her face and her child's as she bends to greet him.

"Will you stay?" Toris asks quietly.

Arianni kisses her child and does not answer.

—

Later, when the moon is high and cold and clear and the camp is silent in sleep, Arianni takes her child in her arms and walks. The night-dark sails of the aravels are furled tightly against their spars, slender black arms stretched out from side to side in great gentle arches that do not close away the stars. She lifts her eyes to them, whispering their names to her child: here the Oak, and here Falon'Din with his spear, and here the Hawk and Hare, loved by Andruil above all others.

He will know these stars. If nothing else—if nothing else, she will teach him this. These stars have led her home and from it again, and guarded her dreams, and even though Kirkwall drowns the night skies in smoke and flame the stars will keep steady beyond that smoke all the same, high and still and unchanging, shining there when at last he decides to raise his eyes and seek their light.

"Do you see them?" she whispers, lifting her child in her arms so that she might press her cheek to his. "Da'vhenan, can you see them?"

He makes a soft, comfortable noise and closes his eyes. Arianni laughs again, touches her nose to her son's. "You will learn," she tells him, and smiles. "Feynriel."

—

When Arianni is well and her child is strong enough to be carried, she gathers him in a blue linen cloth sling in the earliest hours of dawn and rests him against her chest, against her heart. He sleeps soundly and without waking, even when she rests her hand on his head, even when the Keeper comes behind her with her soft leaf-thin voice made thinner with emotion. A pair of halla grazing near her glance up, then turn again to their meal, unconcerned.

"Stay with us," she tells her, her vein-lined hand alighting on her shoulder. "Da'len, the aravels will not pass this way again for some time."

"Then I will meet you at the Arlathvhen."

"Oh, child," she sighs, and when Arianni turns the Keeper receives her embrace, carefully, without waking Feynriel.

"His father will be in Kirkwall," she murmurs. "And other humans. Here, he would never be part of the People and…" She swallows, closing her eyes. "Oh, Keeper. The child is half-human and I must—I must—I _must_ let him choose for himself."

"But then you choose exile."

"Not exile. Only—" she smiles, thinking of Elegant, thinking of her own small home, of the vhenadahl, of roots and rooted places and hearts tied to one place alone. One of the halla looks up again, meets her eyes with its brilliant blue gaze until she sees herself in its reflection. "A different home."

The Keeper smiles, her lips trembling at the corners. "Da'len. Do not go."

She shakes her head. "I cannot stay."

"Is there nothing I can say that would persuade you?"

"There was nothing before," Arianni says, half-laughing, half-crying, and takes her hand when she offers it. "And nothing now. I'm sorry, Keeper."

"Dareth shiral, dear one," she tells her, and kisses her forehead, gently, and lets her go.

—

The leaves of the vhenadahl change from pale jade to deep green, flush with health and summer's light. Kirkwall turns warm, then hot; Arianni assists Elegant with new mixtures to keep their clients cool as well as whole. Feynriel learns to move one limb at a time, learns to blink his enormous eyes until the world falls adoring at his feet; Arianni smiles and nods, proud as any mother, and when the people of the alienage come to her door to help her and to admire her child she invites them inside, learns their names, learns their friendship and their ways alike. She teaches them the ways of the People, and the stories of the People; they teach her which streets are safe and which are not, where the cheapest and best fruit may be purchased, how to treat the vhenadahl with enchanted oils so that even here in this dim, small corner of the city, the tree might flourish and grow.

One day, in the last gold hour of light, she sees Vincento in Lowtown. As she watches he rolls away the tenting for his shop, and fastens the locks on the heavy chest at his feet, and turns over his shoulder to call to his partner. His voice is the same, she realizes. His hair, red-brown and shining in the light, is the same.

And his eyes, when they fall on her where she stands in the last sun's light, are the same.

She waits. His eyes soften, and his mouth begins to curve, as if even now he might still love her; then he sees the child in her arms and the expression vanishes, sudden and fleeting as a bird-flock startled from trees. He half-turns, shutting her away—but before he can close himself completely Arianni crosses to meet him, unwilling to allow him this final moment without allowing her son the same. She asks, "Did you get my letters?"

"Yes," he says, in that low rumbling voice she loved so dearly, with the accent she once thought alluring beyond reason. "I received your letters, Arianni."

"Good," she says, and means it. Then she lifts the child in her arms so that Vincento might see his face. "This is your son. I thought you should meet him."

Vincento says nothing. Arianni waits without moving, patient as a river that waits for the sea, and when at last Vincento sees she has no intention of yielding he lifts his hand and pulls the blue cloth from the child's face. "My son," he repeats quietly, touching the nose that is the same as his nose, touching the ears that are her ears blunted. "He looks strong."

"He is."

"You look…well."

"I am."

"Arianni," he says, and suddenly she no longer wishes to hear it, neither her name nor his apologies nor his excuses. She puts up a hand and he stops, lips still parted; she tucks her son against her chest and he sighs, lowering his eyes.

"Your son's name is Feynriel," she tells him. "I'll write you."

"As you wish," he murmurs, and Arianni turns away from him to the setting sun, to the broad sea-green leaves of the vhenadahl that stretch like many hands over her for shelter, to her home. Feynriel butts his head against her breast and lets out a noise of complaint; Arianni smiles and adjusts his weight in her arms, and kisses his forehead, and begins to hum the first lines to a lullaby.

She keeps her dreams in a box beneath her bed, safe, preserved, hidden away for the sake of more practical things. There is so much _more_ for Feynriel here, a life she has never known, worlds she cannot imagine opening before his feet and hers as if to say: _come_. He will learn these things in time, and she will learn with him, and when the aravels come with the spring she will teach him her ways and her stars in turn. He was made by two worlds; he will be the best of both.

But until then, she will dream for him, mother for her son, until he opens his eyes and learns to dream for his own.

 


End file.
